The goal of this 2-day course is to provide students with information that will allow them to correctly and efficiently collect location data with a GPS unit and transfer that information to a GIS for mapping and analysis.

Objectives The specific objectives of this course are to provide students with:

• a familiarity with GPS units, how they work, and how to use them correctly in the field
• a working knowledge of geographic coordinate systems
• a working knowledge of collecting, storing, and correcting GPS coordinates
• the ability to transfer coordinates from GPS units to the desktop computer

This 2-day course was designed to provide students with hands-on experience using a variety of GPS units to support field research. The course will provide background information on how GPS units work and how to use that information to plan for successful use in the field. Students will be exposed to several different grades of units and how they differ. We will also introduce geospatial coordinate systems and how they should be employed in field research.
Students will work in the field as part of this course. We will use GPS units to map point, line and polygon features. We will use GIS software to plan field missions as well as download information to the desktop computer. We will also demonstrate how to interpret this information accurately for subsequent analysis.
Additional topics that will be covered include the use of differential correction, data dictionaries, PDAs, and other field equipment.